Posted on 10/26/2018 8:17:48 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
What’s the NFL? I follow only soccer and bicycle racing.
And the top GC contenders spend the better part of 3 weeks trying to stay out of trouble, and have their sights set on picking off a key stage or 2 - plus the TT(s).
I know nothing about bike racing. What am I looking at in that photo?
You are looking at a hidden electric motor installed in a Tour de France bicycle.
Used only in short bursts, especially during climbs, can give a rider a huge advantage.
Forgive me for a drawn out story, but this reminds me of my experience trying out for the Jr. Worlds Team in the late 1970s at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. The whole process was a completely pathetic screwed up mess from day one.
We had been told before we came that for the individual time trial which would determine the team we were on for the team time trial portion, that gear restrictions would not apply. Then the night before, the staff changed their minds and we were told that we would have gear restrictions after all.
So that night I swapped the cogs around on my freewheel to comply. Unfortunately, I did not have a lot of experience with this and did not realize that the cogs needed to go on with the beveled faces oriented in a specific direction depending on their position. So the next morning during the time trial I had a lot of difficulty shifting into the gears I needed on the rolling course and it screwed up my time.
So I ended up on a team with two of us who were pretty good and three riders who were good enough to qualify for the tryouts but not very strong. So the two of us who were strong riders basically pulled the other three through most of the course, but a couple of them still couldn't keep up and since the time was based on the 4th riders time reaching the line, our time suffered.
So the other strong rider and I hung out that evening and it turned out that he was using “speed” to enhance his performance. Well the next day, for the road race it was extremely hot. The organizers decided to start the race an hour early to avoid part of the heat. Only no one told me about it until about 30 minutes before we were suppose to get ourselves and our bikes loaded on a bus. When I ran down to the cafeteria there had been a run on the food and I was able to eat almost nothing.
The road race was longer than a typical junior road race; it was over 90 miles. I managed to get myself into the winning break away, but then I completely bonked out. I hadn't eaten basically any breakfast and was not able to find enough food to stuff into my pockets and of course I had no one to hand me water during the race. So on the second to last lap I got dropped and stopped at a gas station to eat something. Then I rode back to the finish line. Because of the extremely poor planning by the USCF people in charge of the event, a high percentage of the field had dropped out.
The group that I had been in came across first, and the field had basically fragmented into a lot of small groups. One of the last people who came across the line was the doper that I had befriended after the team time trial. He came across the line with white dried sweat all around his mouth and then collapsed and they had to haul him away in an ambulance.
So that night there was a big mandatory meeting called and our new “coach” Eddie Borysewicz, who still didn't speak English gave us an impassioned speech in Polish which was then translated. He praised LeMond and the others who were in the winning break away and then he said that those of us who had not finished the race were quitters and would never amount to anything. Then he called up my new doper buddy and said that he was the finest example of all the riders there because he had pushed himself until he practically died.
I knew that he had collapsed because the he was using amphetamines and I guessed that Eddie B and the coaching staff were either too stupid to figure this out or this was some kind of tacit approval. So my doper buddy of course didn't make the team, but he actually did move to Europe to race. He had no success and had to come back after a year or two.
So back then the only truly effective performance enhancing technique was “blood doping” where you stored your own blood and then had it pumped back in the night or morning before an event to increase its oxygen carrying potential. It was not illegal to do this back then. I knew top riders who were my friends who did do this but it took money and know how. And I had no interest in that; I don't like being stuck with needles for one thing. But I thought it was wrong even if it wasn't illegal.
I don't know if “most top level amateurs” would use the types of performance enhancing techniques available today if they were legal. But if they knew it would give them a definite advantage and it was legal you are probably right. I don't really like that you are probably right, I have always looked down on this type of nonsense.
More of a science than a bike race.
It's a long established fact of cycling sport science that a "normal" rider can't produce more than 6 Watts of power per each kilogram of body weight indefinitely. The tests have been extensive and ongoing and no certifiably "clean" rider has ever managed to make more than 6W/kg for 30 minutes or longer.
So if a rider's power meter shows he made 6.5W/kg for an hour, he clearly is doping. It would be like putting a rolling dynamometer on a NASCAR which showed the car was making 1100 bhp under acceleration. And the power meters broadcast that information in real time via BlueTooth, so you can't hide it. Now significant numbers of the pro peloton regularly are making more than 6W/kg. Four-time TdF champ Chris Froome actually has recorded more than 7kW/kg for an extended period (30 minutes or longer) during the Tour (and was never caught doping). Even back in the early 2000s, Michele Ferrari, Lance Pharmstrong's dope doctor, preached to Lance and his teammates that you couldn't win the Tour de France unless you were making at least 6.5W/kg.
Enter EPO. Because no human can make 6.5W/kg riding on just -- as the Italians say -- pane e aqua (bread and water).
So despite the Lance Pharmstrong debacle, doping still is rampant. And the power meter numbers prove it. But because of pro cycling's omertà (code of silence), and because the anti-doping authorities are completely feckless and aren't catching them, no one outside of the teams know how it's being done.
Just like no one outside of the teams knew how Pharmstrong was doing it until Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton broke the silence.
The problem with race radios is they can tell the riders when it's safe not to go hard. Which only works to the advantage of one guy, the race leader.
In television coverage of the TdF you'll often see a small group of riders break away from the main peloton early in a stage and disappear from sight. Sometimes they will get several minutes ahead of the main body. But the main body doesn't invest in the energy to pursue until very nearly the end of the stage because they know a very large group of riders working together can ride as much as 20% faster than a small group. Depending on the relative sizes of the groups the main body can make up as much as a minute's worth of deficit per each 10 km (6 miles) on the road. So instead of catching them at the outset, and then fighting with them every time they decide to accelerate, the peloton just bides its time while the small group wears itself out from the effort. And reels them in in one fell swoop very near the end of the stage so there's no chance for the small group to retaliate.
Not having a race radio makes it a somewhat different world because the leader can't necessarily take the risk of losing sight of any of his opponents. He has to ride hard when they do and for as long as they do so as to not let them ride out of sight or risk them developing an insurmountable lead.
In truth, even before race radio the teams would post people along the race route with stop watches who would time the difference between the breakaway group and the main body. And they'd write that number on the equivalent of a "pit board" to show to the main peloton as they rode past. But that was only a rough estimate. Along with race radio (which is 2-way), now there's also GPS tracking and overhead surveillance provided by the television networks' helicopters. All of which gives the teams' strategists have a much more complete picture of how the race is likely to progress.
All of which works primarily to the advantage of the race leader because its greatest benefit is it tells you very precisely how late you can wait to start working hard without risking losing position.
Yep. Look at Sky. Geraint Thomas, Chris Froome, Egan Bernal,Luke Rowe ... plus Stannard, Poels, Kwiatmowski, Kiryienka all on the same team? That’s not a paceline, it’s a freight train.
Fireman, I’d like to believe you are wrong about the choices people will make. I’m not sure how it would come out. That’s why I am for strong anti-doping measures. I don’t really care if Lance or Levi dope themselves silly, but it’s unfair to the guys like you, that don’t.
I am a strong non-competitive rider. A flight surgeon who is a very good tri-athlete, claims he could be at least 5% stronger if he claimed bronchial problems and took albuterol. He relayed that parents come in all the time with top high school athletes looking for exactly that edge.
Pretty sad, really.
What fireman has pointed out is that within the peloton, or any upper level discipline of sport, everyone knows who the cheaters are and what the real story is. Whispers and gossip eventually betray everyone.
I remember when quarterbacks used to call their own plays?"
That's why Sky is known as "the New Big Blue Train," the Big Blue Train having been the nickname for the USPS back in the Pharmstrong era. The similarities are eerie.
Someone recently dug into the history of TdF winners to find the five who were "worst to first." In other words, what's the worst anyone had ever finished in GC but then went on to win a later TdF. The implication being that the transformation from plowhorse to racehorse only comes under influence of PEDs. Three of the five were riders for Team Sky. In fact, they were three last four TdF winners, Thomas, Froome and Wiggins.
Riis has confessed to using EPO in his 1996 win. Indurain was never caught (there was no direct test for EPO until 2006) but is widely regarded as the first All-EPO, all-the-time TdF champ.
And history is just waiting for the science to catch up with the other three (because the doping control samples they provided will be retained forever).
But I think that team wins because Brailsford has bought talent a step above what other teams have. Like someone else said, Sky's doms are jersey contenders. Heck, their mechanics could probably be leadout riders for weaker teams!
Is that fair? Well, there's no rule against building the strongest team you can. But it sure makes for boring cycling. The UCI knows that. And it's trying to put some pizzazz back into the peloton. But it's also trying to keep the dinero flowing so it doesn't want to antagonize its biggest contributors.
Postal was drug-fueled. Sky is powered by gelt.
By the way, did you hear that Floyd Landis is using the money he got from the Lance settlement to start his own team? LOL!!!
...By the way, did you hear that Floyd Landis is using the money he got from the Lance settlement to start his own team? LOL!!!"
I hear the whining but I can't fault Sky for re-investing profits to insure continued success. That's Capitalism 101. They also said Scuderia Ferrari was "buying the pot" during the Michael Schumacher era. Or when Steinbrenner owned the Yankees. So it happens all across sport and I think it's ridiculous to propose to make it better by punishing teams for their success. Which effectively is "sport as socialism," punishing the successful so the less productive can catch up.
As for FLandis, a lot of people still think he's a dirtbag but you can't get past the fact that without his efforts, the record would still show that Pharmstrong had won the 1999-2005 TdFs. He gave the anti-doping forces a lot of ammunition that they could have used to make the sport cleaner but all they did was kill the sport's king, declare "Job done!" and squander the rest.
I can't for the life of me figure why Floyd would want to get back into that cesspool. He obviously knows the sport is still ruled by PEDs. He recently tweeted this in response to CAS's decision to extend Johan Bruyneel's ban to lifetime. FLandis is in peak form in it and it is absolutely dripping with snark, but he clearly does not suffer any delusion that the sport is anywhere close to clean.
Maybe he thinks by working at the 'developmental' level he can avoid the PEDs, but I doubt even that. Regardless, I wish him well. The fallout from 2006 cost him dearly, both professionally and personally, and I think he's more than paid for his sins. And unlike Pharmstrong what he did was never thuggish or criminal.
Now he is a crusader, a subspecies of a victim.
He loves the lime (away) light!
That's what his insistence on his innocence was, a crusade. Somehow it didn't sit right with him that he should be found guilty of taking one of the few PEDs that he wasn't on. He got to the CAS hearing still arguing that the test results were flawed but by that point, in the view of the CAS, those results were unassailable. He was tilting at windmills.
Apparently he finds tilting at windmills to his liking.
And by the way, Armstrong DID win the 99 - 05 Tours.
Thanks. I wondered about that. I couldn’t recall if he came away scot-free on the PED issue or if there was still doubt.
Man, today’s battles are enough for any one fellow, even one as able as him. Hell of a thing to be fighting last decade’s.
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